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Jerebko’'s early play has SVG looking at 10-man Pistons rotation

Stan Van Gundy is a long way from figuring out his rotation, never mind his starting lineup. But the early impression he took of Jonas Jerebko has him leaning to a 10-man rotation come the regular season.

It’'s a given that Andre Drummond, Josh Smith and Greg Monroe will be in that group and command the bulk of minutes at power forward and center. It’'s a good bet that Van Gundy will use two players apiece at each of the three perimeter spots – Kyle Singler and Caron Butler the front-runners at small forward, Jodie Meeks and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope at shooting guard and Brandon Jennings, D.J. Augustin and Will Bynum fighting for the top two spots at point guard, at least until rookie Spencer Dinwiddie is cleared to play and makes his case.

“"We'’ll play at least nine on a nightly basis but probably 10 a lot, based on the way Jonas has played in September and in camp,"” Van Gundy said after Wednesday’'s morning practice.

The first sign Jerebko, who fell out of the rotation during Maurice Cheeks'’ tenure before taking some momentum into the off-season after performing well for interim coach John Loyer, was winning Van Gundy’'s favor came in late June when he included him with Drummond, Monroe, Smith, Jennings, Singler and Caldwell-Pope as part of the team'’s core. He expanded on that earlier this week.

“"I'’ve been really happy (with him). Nobody put more time in here this summer than Jonas did. Because of his play with the national team in years past, he'’s never really been able to devote as much time to his own development and his own game. He'’s gotten stronger. He’'s in tremendous shape."

"“I think the key to Jonas--and we talked about this early on--is he has to get back to being the guy he was when he first came into the league, that hungry guy playing with incredible energy, trying to make his spot. What we'’ve seen in September, he looks like a guy who is committed to being a high-energy guy."”

Van Gundy came out of Wednesday'’s early practice seeing energy all around him. He was pleased enough with the intensity and achievement that he cut the session about 10 minutes short of its allotted three hours.

“"We really wanted today for our intensity and energy to be up,"” he said. “"We wanted to really focus on our transition defense, we wanted to focus on better ball movement and playing the game offensively and we wanted to concentrate on our pick-and-roll defense and we made strides in all three of those. So if you can make strides in three things, it’'s a good day, especially on day two. The main thing with me is we weren’'t backpedaling and jogging up the floor, we turned and run. And that, going in both directions, is going to make a big difference.”"

You might not be able to tell much about Van Gundy’s rotation coming out of next Tuesday’'s preseason opener, when Chicago comes to The Palace. But after that, he'’ll probably start using nine or 10 players and start evaluating player combinations.

"“We'’ll probably go with a different 10 every game and there'’ll be a lot of guys who may not play a game or two. You might do it once, first game or last game, where you play everybody. But it’'s hard to get into a rhythm where you'’re doing that, so for at least five of the games we’ll probably settle on nine or 10 guys for that night.”"

The way it looks now, Jonas Jerebko is going to be one of them when the Pistons go to Denver for the Oct. 29 season opener.